Subjects:
Walt Whitman tries to understand the importance of this shared experience, in hopes it will transcend time and mortality to reach us in the future. He thought it would invoke the same emotions, feelings and questions this place invokes in him. This makes us part of a whole, connects us together, both present and future. He explains that the body, where the self and world come together, designates us as individuals, but also helps us partakes in this shared experience. “I too had received identity by my body; That I was, I knew was of my body-and what I should be, I knew I should be on my body.” (Whitman 6)
Whitman’s main message to us is summarized in his question to us, “What is it, then, between us?”. (Whitman
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He communicates to us by addressing us many times in the poem. He asks as if the way the city is now is how it should stay, but years before there was people that wanted the city to stay the same, same as he does now, but nothing can stop the growing population or industrialization that comes with time. I think he does a really well imaging what interests us. But then he changes his mood to show his understanding of the time difference. As the poem goes on and the theme of time, meaning growing and changing, comes about you realize he knows that this really isn’t what interest us, but it should be. In the beginning he starts by stating that we all will appreciate this scenery someday as he did then. You need to experience this world for yourself or through the imagery of writing. The people on the ferry interest him because they are not worried about the future as he is. Another examples of this is, “The large white steamers in motion, the pilot-houses, The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sun-set, The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolicsome crests and glistening,”. Later in the poem, his true thoughts of the future are revealed.
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